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Frayed Prospects, Despite a Degree

nytimes.com

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Re: Frayed Prospects, Despite a Degree

#31

Post by kolektiv »

potatolicious wrote: post #29
peterlongnguyen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like it might be a sit-down-for-coffee styled chat, as opposed to anything formal.

Right, but the point stands - if someone is with hiring authority at a company responds to your job search, you have not yet been disqualified. So if it was clear on his resume/communication that he had less than 2 years experience, the "we require 2 years" is an excuse, not the real reason. If the recruiter knew he lacked the experience, and if the experience was a hard, unyielding barrier, then the recruiter would…

True, as someone who's done a bit of hiring, if you're meeting someone, you're still considering them as possible - you don't waste your time many times before getting pickier. Two years isn't a hard and fast rule - it never will be - you meet a brilliant candidate with 23 months and you won't hire them? Of course not. It's just a proxy. We want someone with about the skills that you should have acquired in two years.

We've all met people who have those skills with much less experience - and we'd hire them. Yes it's an excuse in a way to say then that this is why you weren't hired. Not a lie as such though - just the "reason".

Re: Frayed Prospects, Despite a Degree

#32

Post by plg »

newsflash : University is not job training (except for professional programs like engineering, physical therapy, etc) ... University is _education_

I think what we are (re)discovering is that _education_ is a luxury, for the wealthy class. What the bottom 90% of the country needs is job training, not education. Or at least job training _first_ ... and education as a hobby.

Germany is getting it right: http://goo.gl/aRhvk (recent article from The Economist). They have a society where what we refer to pejoratively as "vocational training" is a valued segment of society, and many kids coming out of school gladly and enthusiastically choose that path instead of the academic track.

Somehow in north america we have adopted a culture where going and getting an honours degree in English Lit from Yale at $240,000 USD (4 x $60,000/yr) is valued more than going to college and becoming a licensed electrician or plumber, for example.

Like I said... education is for the (already) wealthy, privileged class. It's time that the middle class stop pretending otherwise. All we are doing is getting ourselves into debt. Instead we should train for jobs. Get educated in your spare time. University is not job training.

Re: Frayed Prospects, Despite a Degree

#33

Post by bbeckman »

I understand this situation all too well. I quit my software development job in 2011 to finish my computer science degree. After a few months of enjoying my time off, a former boss of mine recruits me to do part-time development work for him. My current position pays extremely well, but it is unfulfilling maintenance work. So, while I'm grateful to have it, with graduation approaching I've started seriously looking for jobs.

So far, it has been very difficult to even get call backs from recruiters. My suspicion is that it looks bad to potential employers when somebody goes back to school in their late 20s (or later).

Re: Frayed Prospects, Despite a Degree

#34

Post by jimbokun »

nostrademons wrote: post #16
rayiner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that there aren't efficiency improvements happening. The economy is clearly producing as much as it did before with fewer workers. But efficiency improvements reduce production costs, which, in a competitive market, tends to be reflected as reduced prices. But when prices go down, quantity demanded goes up, so efficiency improvements tend to result in more overall production. I.e. the fact that compani…

Part of this is because of wealth distribution, and part of it is because of a lack of imagination. When businesses use productivity enhancements to cut labor requirements without increasing price or output, then all the money saved by this accumulates to the business. That results in large cash surpluses, which we're seeing right now (Apple has $40B in cash and short-term investments). In order to capture and redist…

"In order to capture and redistribute that cash, the rest of the population needs to produce products that appeal to the firms who have the cash - but there's relatively little of value that an individual or small business owner can supply to a giant company like Apple."

If Apple has $40B in cash and no productive way to invest it at an above market return, the only sensible course of action is to distribute it all as a dividend.

Re: Frayed Prospects, Despite a Degree

#35

Post by dopamean »

lsc wrote: post #19
rayiner wrote: post #2

One of the things people don't like to talk about is how the economy handles the oversupply of college graduates: use bright line rules to get people out of the job market. Two candidates, a C/O 2012 and a C/O 2013 graduate should be fungible from the perspective of a recruiter, but they're not. The former has a scarlet letter on his resume, and people with lesser credentials from the next class will be hired over hi…

>If you don't get a job a year or so after graduation in your major field, you probably never will. This is not my perception at all. I got my job without a degree by being willing to work for pay I was qualified for while doing a job that I wasn't qualified for, but that I was able to 'figure out' well enough. If you are willing to work for retail wages, the standards go way down, and there are more employers than y…

> I got my job without a degree by being willing to work for pay I was qualified for while doing a job that I wasn't qualified for, but that I was able to 'figure out' well enough.

This is precisely what I'm hoping to do now.

Re: Frayed Prospects, Despite a Degree

#36

Post by jrarredondo »

bbeckman wrote: post #33

I understand this situation all too well. I quit my software development job in 2011 to finish my computer science degree. After a few months of enjoying my time off, a former boss of mine recruits me to do part-time development work for him. My current position pays extremely well, but it is unfulfilling maintenance work. So, while I'm grateful to have it, with graduation approaching I've started seriously looking f…

Going back to school does not automatically make you "look bad" at all. It shows your commitment to education and to finish what you started. There has to be some other reason you are not being called back. Maybe it's a bad resume, or your targeting is not good, heck, as we have seen in previous posts last week here, it may be that your name is "Kim"! (Look it up), or its your location or skill set presentation.

I find it hard to believe you cannot find a rewarding job in software these days! Assuming you are good, it has to be your presentation (in whichever format, paper, voice or email).

Re: Frayed Prospects, Despite a Degree

#37

Post by UK-AL »

bbeckman wrote: post #33

I understand this situation all too well. I quit my software development job in 2011 to finish my computer science degree. After a few months of enjoying my time off, a former boss of mine recruits me to do part-time development work for him. My current position pays extremely well, but it is unfulfilling maintenance work. So, while I'm grateful to have it, with graduation approaching I've started seriously looking f…

Its common to back to school in your late 20s for business school.

Re: Frayed Prospects, Despite a Degree

#38

Post by rollo_tommasi »

nostrademons wrote: post #13

I think the key here is "without taking advantage of other opportunities". If you're unemployed for a couple years and you don't do anything, then you're signaling something very important to an employer: passivity. A fresh grad with no experience has no experience, but there's also no information to indicate that they won't be a good employee. A two-year unemployed worker has no experience and has two years worth of…

Just start a nonprofit in Vietnam! Surely this kind of opportunity is available to a construction worker who attended Kennesaw State. And if you do spend your years of unemployment working for free - assuming you're not done in by the many physical and psychological stresses of long-term unemployment - you too can snag a coveted $35,000/year call center job, just like the other kid in the article.

Look, this article is about basically unskilled workers with degrees from bottom-tier universities in useless subjects. That's their problem - they have little to no economic value to anyone. All the volunteering and hustle in the world is not going to turn them into anything other than exploitable labor to be had at bargain-basement wages.

Re: Frayed Prospects, Despite a Degree

#39

Post by rollo_tommasi »

plg wrote: post #32

newsflash : University is not job training (except for professional programs like engineering, physical therapy, etc) ... University is _education_ I think what we are (re)discovering is that _education_ is a luxury, for the wealthy class. What the bottom 90% of the country needs is job training, not education. Or at least job training _first_ ... and education as a hobby. Germany is getting it right: http://goo.gl/a…

I think you're broadly right but your specific example is a bit off. An unexceptional English lit major at Yale will walk into any number of prestigious and potentially lucrative jobs in publishing, finance, consulting, nonprofit work, politics, etc, whereas an unexceptional English lit major - or even a business major - from Expensive Second-Tier Private U will have all those doors slammed in her face. It's the latter group whose expectations need adjusting.

Re: Frayed Prospects, Despite a Degree

#40

Post by potatolicious »

kolektiv wrote: post #31
potatolicious wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but the point stands - if someone is with hiring authority at a company responds to your job search, you have not yet been disqualified. So if it was clear on his resume/communication that he had less than 2 years experience, the "we require 2 years" is an excuse, not the real reason. If the recruiter knew he lacked the experience, and if the experience was a hard, unyielding barrier, then the recruiter would…

True, as someone who's done a bit of hiring, if you're meeting someone, you're still considering them as possible - you don't waste your time many times before getting pickier. Two years isn't a hard and fast rule - it never will be - you meet a brilliant candidate with 23 months and you won't hire them? Of course not. It's just a proxy. We want someone with about the skills that you should have acquired in two years…

I agree - but that's part of the problem with this article, as well as similar articles like it. The people they interview seem to genuinely believe that they were rejected because they didn't have a literal 24-months of experience, rather than simply lacking the skills (of which experience-time is just a proxy).

If we started communicating to people that they're not good enough for the job, maybe we would have fewer people running around complaining about how unfair everything is.

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